Oxford University, mediocre first year law (mods) grades, and the bar

(edited 5 years ago)

Thank you!

Had been hoping for the commercial/chancery bar (though I hear chancery is v intellectual!).

I'm mostly just worried about accumulating mooting experience, as all the Oxford moots seem to require you to submit mods results (aside from the Bar Soc, I believe?), and mine are not great (62 average). Also a bit worried about being able to secure minis in first place, due to low results.

I actually applied for an internship at Penguin (very dramatic career change), on a whim, so we'll see how that goes!

Reply 2

mishieru07

Original post by ReluctantWriter

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Oxford have lots of internal moots (e.g. Cuppers, Shearman & Sterling) which don't use grades as a selector? In my time, they only cared about Mods results if you wanted to represent Oxford in certain external competitions like Jessup and Price Media.

Not a barrister personally (although I know a number of them from Oxford) but if I'm not wrong, commercial/ chancery tends to attract very strong applicants, so I would work really hard on getting a First in Finals and probably do the BCL after that. Apart from mooting, you could also consider writing academic articles, joining the OUULJ or becoming a research assistant to a professor.